LOS ANGELES – Collin Ashton is playing linebacker at USC. Might as well. He’d be at all the home games anyway.

He has never, as in never in his life, missed one. Sometimes that took some imagination.

“He’d play a Pop Warner game in La Habra or somewhere on a Saturday morning and there’s no way we could get back home to Mission Viejo and still make the game,” said Mark Ashton, Collin’s dad. “So we’d pack these warm-water jugs, and open up the car doors and he’d get behind them and take off his uniform, and we’d basically wash him off right there. Then we’d go to the Coliseum.”

Ashton weighed 180 pounds his senior year at Mission Viejo. The mailbox was empty. But his priorities were clear. If he was going to keep playing the game he loved, it would be at USC. The Trojans’ opinion was not reciprocal. Or, in Ashton’s mind, relevant.

“The coach at Hawaii called one day, but even that wasn’t a scholarship offer,” he said Wednesday. “If I wasn’t going to play anymore, I probably would have gone to Arizona State with some buddies. But I wasn’t going to try to make the team there. Because even if I did and they were playing USC? In my heart I’d still be rooting for USC.”

Ashton and his two little brothers were ballboys at the USC basketball games, when George Raveling was coaching. “When they would lose, those were some bad days,” Ashton said. Which meant he had a bunch of bad days.

They were all sitting at home in March of 1992 when one of USC’s few good teams was playing Georgia Tech in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. James Forrest swished a hope shot at the buzzer to beat the Trojans. “You should have seen the house,” Collin said. “One of us said something and my dad said, ‘Shut up!’ There was like this silence for a long time.

“I look back at myself back then, and I really can’t believe what I used to do. I’d wear these cardinal and gold outfits to school. Whenever USC would lose, I’d be the target. That eight-game (football) losing streak to UCLA, that was a rough time. I mean, I was a dork.”

He’s also a Trojan. Uniformed personnel.

Originally a walk-on, Ashton has played linebacker in 28 consecutive games and has started two for a team that is 24-0 since Sept.27, 2003, and is playing its way into a college football legend. And with each defensive injury, he becomes more vital. His roommate, Dallas Sartz, went out because of a dislocated shoulder last week, so Ashton is prepared for all three linebacker positions as USC goes to Oregon on Saturday.

Before that he was jousting for time with sophomore Keith Rivers. There was no empty mailbox at the Rivers house. He was everyone’s top linebacker recruit two years ago. Yet he still turns to Ashton for pointers.

“Keith has the best balance I’ve ever seen,” Ashton said. “He can fall down and get back up so quickly you don’t even know he was down. He’s going to be a great player. But here, you have to know the defense. You can’t be caught in a place you’re not supposed to. If it happens too often, these coaches are not going to play you.

“I’ve always looked at the whole defense, everybody’s responsibility, and it helps you understand what you should be doing.”

“He was the jack of all trades and master of nothing in high school,” Mark Ashton said. “He played everything except quarterback. For him to even get this chance is a tribute to Bob Johnson.”

Johnson, the Mission Viejo coach, noticed that Paul Hackett’s final USC team was having serious problems long-snapping the ball. Since Ashton is an unerring snapper, Johnson put out a feeler to USC. The very next day, assistant coach Kennedy Pola was on the Diablos’ campus.

Ashton is in his second year as the USC snapper – it could be his stealth ticket to the NFL. But he wanted to play actual football, too.

“It was brutal at first,” he said. “Guys like (fullback) Charlie Landrigan used to clean me out every day. There were many nights when I walked off the practice field, wondering what I thought I was doing. But I wasn’t going to give it up, even though there are some obstacles.”

One obstacle is the second-class citizen status of a non-scholarship player. Ashton knew he had to lift weights religiously, if not maniacally, to earn a chance (he’s listed at 220 now). But the weight room wasn’t his for the asking.

“I got really angry one time,” he said. “We had lifting sessions at 6, 8 and 10 a.m. I was only allowed to go at 6 and 8. I didn’t get up for the 6 and I had class at 8. So I show up for the 10 and they say no. That was tough. Little things like not being able to get a protein shake when you need to.

“Then again, it’s supposed to be tough. If you don’t love the game you’re not going to make those sacrifices.”

It is hard to exaggerate how high Mark Ashton’s magic carpet is flying these days, watching Collin play. “I played, too, in the early ’70s, but my position was ‘Left Out,'” he said. “You needed binoculars to see me out there. These are pretty special days for all of us.”

And the days ahead? Collin is a senior. He’ll play the NFL workout game, see what happens. Maybe, eventually, he’ll coach. Maybe he’ll have a son who plays at USC. It would be the convenient thing.